Not the words of someone who kneels

Xaver Könneker is a visual artist, teacher and researcher who intertwines cultural theory with photographic practice. His work often reflects on identity, structures, and the photographic medium. The quote by Lucian Freud “The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.” has strongly influenced the way he thinks and works. Intimately related to this, his work investigates the socially conditioned modality of looking, probing into how our social, professional, and political backgrounds not only determine how we see but also what we are able to see.

In the ongoing project ‘not the words of someone who kneels’, Xaver Könneker tries to grapple with the phenomena of social alienation and lonely deaths, in the process exploring how ‘My Way’ by Frank Sinatra, an anthem to the uncompromising ‘I’, became the most popular funeral song in Western Europe.